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President Obama rides bus into GOP deficit battle

Obama hammered the House speaker for 'walking away' from a grand-bargain debt deal. |
Reuters
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And anxious independent voters, in the words of Republican pollster David Winston, “aren’t looking for a conversation, they are looking for a plan.”

Then there’s the ascent of two Republican presidential hopefuls: Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who campaigned within shouting distance of the president in Iowa this week, re-energizing the tea party movement and counteracting any moderating effect the public backlash against the debt deal might otherwise have had.

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Veteran Democratic strategist Paul Begala said Obama’s tough tone will help him, but only if he comes to grips with the fact that the GOP isn’t bargaining in good faith.

“Listen, Mr. President, Republicans have one objective, and it is not a stronger economy or bipartisanship — it’s destroying your presidency,” said Begala, who is organizing a pro-Democrat independent group that is raising cash for the 2012 congressional campaigns. “If you believe anything else, you are deluding yourself. … It’s a faith-based myth that anything is going to force these people to behave in a bipartisan way.”

Republicans, on the other hand, said Obama is wasting his time and the federal government’s bus fuel.

“Obama’s not going to bully Republican House members into anything, regardless of what the polls say on any given issue. They aren’t afraid of him,” one Republican operative said. “They’re afraid [of] Bachmann and Perry or a tea party opponent in their primary, not Obama. This isn’t 2008.”

Winston, who has worked closely with Boehner over the years, called Obama’s trip “really interesting” as a political exercise but added: “We’ve got 9 percent unemployment and low economic growth. So the questions that voters are going to ask President Obama — and Gov. Perry and [former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt] Romney — is, ‘What are you actually going to do?’”

Obama’s staff says he’s done plenty in the face of indiscriminate opposition. And the president himself will deliver a major policy address outlining his plan for deficit reduction and job creation in early September, a senior administration official told POLITICO. Obama has said his proposal will include a hybrid of deficit cuts, tax reform and modest job-creation initiatives.

But a key part of Obama’s strategy is keeping the pressure on Republicans who have fallen even further in the public eye than he has post debt ceiling fiasco. A CNN/ORC poll put Republican disapproval at an all-time high of 59 percent and Gallup found congressional approval tied at an all-time low of 13 percent.

Blaming Congress is a time-honored practice of nearly every president on the skids. But the main reason Obama is negotiating from the podium is because he’s had so little leverage at the bargaining table

These two sentences say it all.

Although, this president has continued to blame everyone for his compiled failures.

Love the picture of the woman sitting there with the adorning look on her face as she listens to this "community organizer" do what he does best.............CAMPAIGN on Taxpayers money. This woman is exactly what is wrong with some voters........CLUELESS.

Obama has to be the most unpresidential president that the United States has ever had. What a colossal embarrassment this whining crybaby is - a regular victim-of-everything! If only this thing called 'life' wouldn't happen! Of all the bad luck!

President Obama is smart to take his jobs agenda to the heartland. He is right to reaffirm his rational, balanced approach to deficit reduction and energizing job growth. He is right to affirm Americans who are disgusted with Republican intransigence, time-wasting political games and terrorist tactics. He is right to honestly remind them of the Republican coddling of the rich, while Republicans make life more expensive for the rest of US. The S&P downgrade was a Republican downgrade; S&P as much as said it. The stock market roller-coaster was another unwanted gift from irresponsible brinkmanship Republicans. Our president is being tame compared to the tougher talk he'll blister Republicans with next year. He's indirectly reminding Americans they are right in feeling disgust with Republicans. He is encouraging Americans to let their representatives on the Hill know how they feel. If Republicans don't want to listen to reason from our president and insist on hiding from citizens and sticking their fingers in their ears so they can't hear the millions of rational complaints and pleas from voters, let them. Next year we will sweep them from office and Republicans won't be able to say they weren't warned.

A judge on Friday threw out Obama administration rules that sought to slow down expedited environmental review of oil and gas drilling on federal land. U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled in favor of a petroleum industry group, the Western Energy Alliance, in its lawsuit against the federal government, including Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The ruling reinstates Bush-era expedited oil and gas drilling under provisions called categorical exclusions on federal lands nationwide, Freudenthal said. The government argued that oil and gas companies had no case because they didn’t show how the new rules, implemented by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service last year, had created delays and added to the cost of drilling.

Freudenthal rejected that argument.

“Western Energy has demonstrated through its members recognizable injury,” she said. “Those injuries are supported by the administrative record.”

Congress had mandated the expedited review process that Obama/Salazar ignored in order to encourage American oil and natural gas development where the impact is minimal and/or where environmental analysis has already been conducted. Salazar’s Interior Department steamrolled over the congressional requirement and curtailed the expedited reviews without a formal process and public comment period.

Freudenthal was appointed to the federal bench not by Reagan or Bush…but by Barack Obama. Which makes the rejection of the White House’s claim that it did no harm to the economy all the more noteworthy:

President Obama! Leave the fighting to our troops. You were elected to lead, not fight. Quit talking and let's see some action for a CHANGE! The sign of a great leader is taking responsibility, not daring others to act. Lastly, good leaders don't place the blame on others for one's own shortcomings. Ex President Bush has been gone for approximately 2 years!

I am an independent and lean Democrat, since I don't agree with the social policies of the conservatives, or the tea party. I voted for President Obama and donated to his campaign, but I doubt if I will vote for him again. I watched parts of his meetings on the news channels and I keep thinking that the same congress will be there if he is President again, and if he can't get the things done that he knows are important now, why could he in a next term.

He is a great speaker, and I don't doubt that he is smarter than most people in the room, but sometimes sheer grit and the willingness to get dirty are needed. Congress rolled him in the debt negotiations and he allowed it. Perhaps the Republican's are being the "opposition party" but that isn't going to change. I have buyers remorse. I keep thinking about past presidents in the last century and the majority of them wouldn't have put up with it. He needs to remember that he IS the President of the United States and get stuff done and not just talk about it.

As for the Republican side, I could live with Romney....he wouldn't be as great as some or as bad as others. The libertarian side of me adores Ron Paul, but he isn't going to get out of the gate. Huntsman is a centrist figure that could beat Obama like Reagan took out Carter, but he isn't conservative enough to make it through the primaries. Bachman would make me go vote against her, and Rick Perry is a question mark but if he is tea party through and through like Bachman I would vote for Obama again as well. But there is a tiny part of me that plays with the idea that maybe the country deserves a Bachman to see just how insane that would be. I have been flirting with the idea of buying a place in the Carribean now that we are retired, and just washing my hands of American politics and policies all together.

Factories: Rising regulatory burdens, energy prices and health-care costs -- Obama has left no stone unturned in making American manufacturing globally less competitive and in forcing jobs overseas.

For example, several new Environmental Protection Agency permit requirements have shut down the construction of coal-fired power plants needed to provide manufacturers with affordable electricity. Jeffrey Holmstead, a former top air-quality EPA official, noted that in 2009 the incoming Obama bureaucrats "withdrew permits that had already been issued," and that "dozens are being held up today because they have no way to meet a new standard that EPA has put out."

It will soon get worse. A barrage of new regulations, including measures intended to address global warming, will hit in January 2011 -- directly targeted manufacturers, and far more costly and complex than anything imposed by America's global competitors, like China, on their own industries.

I suppose it's a waste of time to ask why the President is out talking about what he wants to do for America, rather than actually doing it. Does he actually think that running around, getting his precious ego stroked while inciting the people is an act of leadership? Has he said one thing that suggests that he wants to compromise HIS principles for the sake of 'moving forward'? All this President does is talk-talk-talk.

"And at all of his stops, Obama has hammered House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for “walking away” from the ambitious $4 trillion “grand bargain” that might have averted Standard & Poor’s credit downgrade"

Here he is again....continually attacking and blaming. Obama is the one who broke the deal...remember...after he spoke with his Democratic buddies (AKA Pelosi and Reid), he decided that the deal needed more REVENUES (AKA tax increases)....1.2 billion instead of the agreed-upon 800 million.

This guy is SO pathetic..Doesn't he have any media handlers who can see what the rest of us do?

Agreed. That's why he's adopted this 'the best defense is a good offense' approach.

The obvious problem of course being that the offense isn't very good. Vilifying people who object to 1.65 trillion dollar spending deficits and ever-increasing debt burdens is unlikely to generate much sympathy.